Former Lake Officer Sentenced In Weapons Case

August 2, 1985|By Wesley Loy of The Sentinel Staff

TAVARES — U.S. District Court judge in Jacksonville has sentenced a former Lake County police officer and law enforcement instructor to six months in a halfway house and three years' probation for possession of illegal weapons.

Mark Kelso, 33, Tavares, taught law enforcement courses at the Lake County Area Vocational Technical Center until January, when he was charged with stealing firearms from the school and pawning them.

A few days later, Lake authorities teamed with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in a raid of Kelso's home and found an assortment of illegal weapons, including pipe bombs, a sawed-off shotgun, two silencers, a sawed-off rifle fitted for a silencer and a hand grenade.

The raid came after Kelso's girlfriend, Pam Rogers, said he planned to use the illegal weapons to kill Mount Dora police Capt. Noel E. Griffin III.

Griffin was responsible for an investigation that led to Kelso being charged with stealing the guns from the school.

The incident also caused Kelso to lose his job.

State attorneys were forced to drop murder conspiracy charges after Rogers, who is the stepdaughter of Mount Dora Police Chief Bob Roberts, changed her story and said Kelso never directly threatened murder.

Kelso was convicted on two counts of possession of illegal firearms in June.

He was sentenced Monday by Judge John Moore.

Kelso had faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each of the counts.

Kelso had said he made the illegal weapons to use as teaching aids in his law enforcement classes.

He formerly worked as an officer in the Mount Dora and Tavares police departments.